Sabrina Ghayour’s cookbook Bazaar offers recipes for vegetable dishes that are so full of flavor that vegetarians as well as meat eaters would be satisfied and not even miss meat. The recipes are organized into 9 groups: light bites and sharing plates, eggs and dairy, soups and bowl comfort, pies, breads and pastries, salads, moreish mains, cupboard sustenance, spectacular sides, and sweet treats. Drawing on her Iranian background, Ghayour uses Middle Eastern flavors like sumac, tahini, and preserved lemons to enliven traditional and well as newly created recipes. She includes Iranian inspired foods such as kale and cabbage kuku, aash, and sweet saffron bread as well as exploring recipes from around the world such as Moroccan roast vegetable bastilla, Japanese inspired cabbage and sesame salad, and French madeleines. Her leek and celery root soup with za’tar, and orange, olive and onion salad offer unique flavor profiles that are sure to please while her corn, potato and cheddar chowder is pure comfort food. For shear uniqueness, however, the beet halva tart, baby butternut baklava pies, and pomegranate studded cheese ball stand out.Each recipe is presented on a page of its own with a full color photograph of the completed dish, an introduction that describes the authors feelings about the dish, and a list of ingredients on one side of the page with the directions on the other. The ingredients include some that may be difficult to find in local grocery stores like cavolo nero, biber chili flakes, and allspice berries. Ghayour seems to favor feta and halloumi cheeses, tumeric, cumin, saffron, Maldon sea salt flakes, yogurt, and chickpeas but those are usually easy to find locally. Various cooking methods are employed including frying, but no special skills are needed to complete the recipes. For a Middle Eastern look at reinventing vegetable dishes, Bazaar offers a lot.
To buy Bazaar from Amazon.com click here.
Karen Meyers